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Sometimes listening to BitCoin proponants is hilarious. They point out all the disadvantage of current money transfer systems and how BitCoin will solve them ("

by rmc 14y ago

Sometimes listening to BitCoin proponants is hilarious. They point out all the disadvantage of current money transfer systems and how BitCoin will solve them ("No chargebacks! No transaction fees! No-one can take your money!"). Then when you quiz them, they'll admit people'll probably build systems like that on top of bitcoins ("Well people'll probably use escrow services on top of bitcoin to prevent dishonest merchants, and eventually there'll be transaction fees from the miners"). It looks like they are even talking about removing the "no-one can take your money" aspect!

jzwinck 14y ago
This theme occurs often in software development. Someone sees a system that is very complex, old, difficult to understand, and has some known bugs. They implement a simpler, cleaner, new system with fewer known bugs and a handful of missing features. If it takes off, the missing features are added, often by people less intimately familiar and more likely to introduce a few bugs. The cycle repeats.
- mhartl 14y ago
  You're right, of course, but it's worth noting that the current system of national fiat currencies with floating exchange rates isn't very old at all. Commodity currencies (especially metallic standards), in which the money supply is bound to a good of fixed supply, are much older and more thoroughly debugged. Bitcoin, as a virtual fixed-supply commodity, is thus built on a firm theoretical foundation.
  - rmc 14y ago
    What? Commodity currencies are not fool proof. If you find more of the commodity, your currency suffers. This happened to Spain after they started colonizing the Americas. They found lots of silver, and their economy tanked.
codeulike 14y ago
You havent been listening to them closely enough then. There are transaction fees in bitcoin, and always have been. The point is that they should stay low because the system as a whole does not carry the burden of chargebacks and establishing trust.
- rmc 14y ago
  Oh yes, bitcoin has always had the option of transaction fees, i think it's 0 now? But when promoting bitcoin, people often claim there will be none, or money can be tranfered for free.
  - yebyen 14y ago
    There can and there are. When you start using bitcoin (with exchangers like Mt.Gox and with the satoshi client, and community in #bitcoin-otc) you learn quickly that paying a fee is a way to get more miners to pay attention to your block, but that your tx will likely go through without any fee. Some day it's possible that you will have to mine a block to publish your own transactions! Not likely though, there will always be people willing to take less money to do it for you. And you're both right, if you start taking away the features then it undermines the advantages that generally bring users to bitcoin. Who knows what will happen. It's a software system with majority rules.
  - pixelcort 14y ago
    Default fees differ between clients, but most let you override. Note typically fees are per kb of data in the transaction. http://bitcoin.speedstats.org/ http://bitcoin.speedstats.org/ This lets you predict how long your transaction will take based on the amount sent and the fee attached. It does not consider coin age, minimum transaction fees, or kb transaction size.
SilasX 14y ago
As a Bitcoin enthusiast, I am just as annoyed at those people. The lack of chargebacks has its ups and downs, and for cases when the ups outweigh the down, you'll want to layer protocols on top that allow for escrow-like services (including chargebacks), which bitcoin allows, and which people already do with other currencies.
nessus42 14y ago
> "Well people'll probably use escrow services on top of bitcoin to prevent dishonest merchants..." Probably? There are already escrow services for Bitcoin that heavily used.
gwern 14y ago
One would think that people on Hacker News, of all places, would appreciate the distinction between "opt-in" and "opt-out".

by rmc 14y ago

jzwinck 14y ago

This theme occurs often in software development. Someone sees a system that is very complex, old, difficult to understand, and has some known bugs. They implement a simpler, cleaner, new system with fewer known bugs and a handful of missing features. If it takes off, the missing features are added, often by people less intimately familiar and more likely to introduce a few bugs. The cycle repeats.

mhartl 14y ago
You're right, of course, but it's worth noting that the current system of national fiat currencies with floating exchange rates isn't very old at all. Commodity currencies (especially metallic standards), in which the money supply is bound to a good of fixed supply, are much older and more thoroughly debugged. Bitcoin, as a virtual fixed-supply commodity, is thus built on a firm theoretical foundation.
- rmc 14y ago
  What? Commodity currencies are not fool proof. If you find more of the commodity, your currency suffers. This happened to Spain after they started colonizing the Americas. They found lots of silver, and their economy tanked.

codeulike 14y ago

You havent been listening to them closely enough then. There are transaction fees in bitcoin, and always have been. The point is that they should stay low because the system as a whole does not carry the burden of chargebacks and establishing trust.

rmc 14y ago
Oh yes, bitcoin has always had the option of transaction fees, i think it's 0 now? But when promoting bitcoin, people often claim there will be none, or money can be tranfered for free.
- yebyen 14y ago
  There can and there are. When you start using bitcoin (with exchangers like Mt.Gox and with the satoshi client, and community in #bitcoin-otc) you learn quickly that paying a fee is a way to get more miners to pay attention to your block, but that your tx will likely go through without any fee. Some day it's possible that you will have to mine a block to publish your own transactions! Not likely though, there will always be people willing to take less money to do it for you. And you're both right, if you start taking away the features then it undermines the advantages that generally bring users to bitcoin. Who knows what will happen. It's a software system with majority rules.
- pixelcort 14y ago
  Default fees differ between clients, but most let you override. Note typically fees are per kb of data in the transaction. http://bitcoin.speedstats.org/ http://bitcoin.speedstats.org/ This lets you predict how long your transaction will take based on the amount sent and the fee attached. It does not consider coin age, minimum transaction fees, or kb transaction size.

SilasX 14y ago

As a Bitcoin enthusiast, I am just as annoyed at those people. The lack of chargebacks has its ups and downs, and for cases when the ups outweigh the down, you'll want to layer protocols on top that allow for escrow-like services (including chargebacks), which bitcoin allows, and which people already do with other currencies.

nessus42 14y ago

> "Well people'll probably use escrow services on top of bitcoin to prevent dishonest merchants..." Probably? There are already escrow services for Bitcoin that heavily used.

gwern 14y ago

One would think that people on Hacker News, of all places, would appreciate the distinction between "opt-in" and "opt-out".